What is it you think they’re doing now? You buy term life insurance when you’re young and healthy, you get a low rate. You buy when you’re older and have higher risks, you pay more. They have statisticians calculating your expected lifespan, and modern “AI” models are really just statistical models with larger datasets. It’s not really that unreasonable or new a concept.
I doubt anyone you are talking to is opposed to all human rights, that sounds very much like a straw man statement. Reasonable people can disagree about whether any particular right should be protected by law.
The reason is simple: any legally-protected right you have stands in direct opposition to some other right that I could have:
No right is ever meant to be or can be absolute, and not all good government policy is based on rights. Turning a policy argument into one about human rights is not generally going to win the other person over, it’s akin to calling someone a racist because of their position on affirmative action. There’s no rational discussion that can be had after that point.
I don’t know if it helps, but this is not really a lie, and you shouldn’t feel bad about saying it. You have your own reason for not being able to do something you committed to. Someone else might have a different reason that is equally personal that they don’t want to share. “I forgot and I’m sorry” is a socially acceptable way to take responsibility without sharing specifics and potentially making someone else feel confusion or pity.
You can still work on the “why wasn’t I able to do the thing I felt I needed to do” without worrying about “why wasn’t I honest about my reason”.
Just my two cents though.
There is no reason you have to be doing the same thing for 40 years.
Incomes don’t follow a bell curve, so the choice of mean income is a red flag to me. Imagine you had 9 citizens making 100k and one billionaire, the mean is now 100,090k.
Relatedly, being in the bottom 10% doesn’t necessarily mean the same thing in these different countries, in some of them that might not be below the poverty line so it’s comparing apples and oranges.
I suspect it’s worse than that: most people have multiple natural talents they never discover. That is why I encourage my kids to try all kinds of experiences, and not label themselves as “not a science person” or “not outdoorsy”. You don’t need to be good at just one thing.
Didn’t work! I used my identity matrix and I’m exactly the same as I was before.
I have been around some of the tech elite you’re referring to, and I propose that the disconnect arises because Silicon Valley uniquely revolves around Scale (how many people you can reach) and Impact (how big a dent you can leave in the universe). It’s impossible to overstate how ingrained it is in the culture, and it is very explicit when you talk to folks at Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for example: the ability to measure and prove the impact of your project is as important as the project itself.
I admit to being a member of this culture, if not wealthy.
To me, the types of art you mention - art galleries and live theater being good examples - are extremely limited in serving relatively small populations concentrated in city centers where there already is a lot of culture. The generation that created the Internet is, for better or worse, much more interested in bigger investments that can reach everyone on the planet and hopefully improve lives in some measurable and long lasting way.
I’m sure the wealthy here in California contribute to the local arts community just like anywhere else. But there is no equivalent in the arts to curing polio worldwide or giving every child access to the Internet, so I don’t personally disagree with prioritizing these agendas in a coordinated way.
Commerce is just the exchange of goods and services. If we all stop exchanging goods, in what sense would we have a civilization? What would you or anyone accomplish if you had to grow your own food, make your own clothes, build your own house…?